Throughout history, Nobel prize winners have rarely been women. But when they are, they make it count.
Since 1901 The Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences has been awarded to a woman only 45 times. And while many more men have been honored, the achievements of these successful women have shaped history both on a national and a global scale.
This year, as we welcome Alice Munro, another woman of high achievement, to the Nobel Prize winners circle, let’s not forget the stunning discoveries, literary masterpieces, and lessons in self sacrifice that came before.
1. Alice Munro
This year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature went to Alice Munro, who at age 82 has been described as the “master of the contemporary short story”. Her short stories explore the often messy relationships between men and women as well as the intricacies of small town existence. She’s the 13th woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Ms. Munro lives in Clinton, Ontario.
2. Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is an American novelist, editor, and professor whose best known novels include Song of Solomon and Beloved. In 2012, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and in 2006, The New York Times Book Review listed Beloved as the best American novel published in the last 25 years. She was joined the ranks of Nobel Prize winners for Literature in 1993.
3. Mother Teresa
She’s a Roman Catholic Religious Sister who was counted among the Nobel prize winners for peace in 1979. She founded the Missionary of Charity, made up of 4,500 sisters active in 133 countries. The organization has worked in HIV/AIDs, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, orphanages, and schools. Mother Teresa was beatified in 2003, the second step toward sainthood.
4. Pearl Buck
She’s most famous for a book many of us read in high school, the classic novel The Good Earth. The book captured peasant life in China like none before it and as a result in 1932 Ms. Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She is also well known for her efforts on behalf of Asian mixed race adoption.
5. Doris Lessing
A British national, she was born in Persia (now Iran) in 1919 but her family moved to the British colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). These experiences likely shaped the young writer’s view and in 1950 she published her first novel The Grass is Singing. Other works include Children of Violence and The Golden Notebook. She joined the other female Nobel prize winners with her award for Literature in 2007.
6. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard grew up in post World War II Germany and her high school teachers often described her as lazy. Still, it was obvious that she had a gift for science and in 1975 she earned a Ph.D in Molecular Science. In 1995, she was the co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her understanding of genetic control over early embryonic development.
7. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin
Considered one of the pioneering scientists in the field of X-ray crystallography, is one of a select group of Nobel prize winners in Chemistry. Hodgkin earned her Nobel prize in 1964, and in 1969, she was the first to discover the structure of insulin.
8. Maria Goeppert Mayer
Born in Katowice (now Germany), she was a theoretical physicist awarded the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing a shell model of atomic nuclei. She was the second female laureate in Physics after Marie Curie.
9. Marie Curie
Marie Curie is the only women to see her name appear twice among the ranks of Nobel prize winners. In 1903, she won the Nobel Prize in Physics along with her husband Pierre Curie and Antoine Henri Becquerel. Pierre and Marie won for their joint research on radiation, which had been discovered by Becquerel. In 1911, Curie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering the elements radium and polonium.
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